1898 Revenues: The Fullerton List; Railroad 55, The International & Great Northern Railroad

Sunday, October 10, 2010

The Fullerton List; Railroad 55, The International & Great Northern Railroad

This post is part of a continuing series on Richard Fullerton's 1952 Catalog of Railroad Company, Street Railway & Express Company Printed Cancellations on the 1898 U. S. Revenues.

Examples of the cancels, when available, are posted.

RR055: The International & Great Northern Railroad

The I&GNRR was featured on this site in a post on February 27 of this year. I've learned a little more about this railroad since that time, for while I reported than that the I&GNRR was bought out by the MOPAC in the 1950s and merged with the MOPAC, the two lines have always been run as if they were the same company. Indeed, the I&GNRR and the MOPAC were the cornerstone of Jay Gould's and the Gould family's railroad empire. Gould was active in railroads in the southwest from St. Louis to Texas, including other major lines like the Cotton Belt, which also issued printed cancels on the 1898 battleships.

From the historical information as the back of the Fullerton Catalog: A consolidation on February 19, 1872 of the Houston & Great Northern and the International RR, both Texas lines. The I&GNRY was incorporated in Texas August 10, 1911, as successor to the I&GNRR due to foreclosure. The line was purchased in 1924 by the Texas & Mexico Railway but is now solely owned and operated by the MOPAC (RR075).

The Texas & Mexico and the MOPAC were Gould lines.

Handstamp cancels: Fullerton lists three types of cancels in the I&GNRR section, including the catalog's only handstamp cancel. In keeping with site policy regarding handstamps and the battleship proprietary series, I will omit this entry in my listing here. Apparently there is an I&GNRR handstamp that looks somewhat like the type 1 printed cancel, and on this basis Mr. Fullerton probably felt obliged to include the cancel. The cancel is Type HS-1, is a bold and large set of I&GNRR initials 21mm long. This is not a printed cancel.

There are two major types of printed cancel, on three different denominations of battleship stamps and on R154, the green Franklin IR overprinted stamp.

Type 1: One line of serifed caps 2.5mm high and 20.75mm long without punctuation. Undated.

1ct Pale Blue              a.   Normal     (1) Roulette
                                                        (2) HH
                                 av. Invert        (2) HH

2ct Carmine Rose       a. Normal      (1) Roulette
                                                        (2) HH

5ct Lilac                     a. Normal      (1) HH

Unlisted by Fullerton:

10ct Dark Brown      a. Normal      (1) roulette

Type 1, 1ct a.(1)

roulette

Ron Lesher scan

Type 1 1ct a.(2)

Hyphen hole

Type 1 1ct a.(2)

Hyphen hole Block of 4

Frank Sente scan

There appear to be numerous remainders of the I&GNRR 1 cent stamps, as this block can be added to a block of 100 recently sold in one of Eric Jackson's self-run auctions.

Type 2, 2ct a.(1)

2ct roulette w/HS bullseye

Type 2, 2ct a.(2)

hyphen hole

Ron Lesher scan

Type 1, 5ct a.(2)

5 cent hyphen hole

10ct roulette Type 1 - unlisted by Fullerton

Ron Lesher scan

Type 2: One line of serifed caps 2mm high and 17.5mm long without punctuation. Undated.

1ct Green - Perf 12, 1895 Regular Postage Issue overprinted "I.R." in 1898.
a. Normal

Type 2 a.

Frank Sente scan

The I&GNRR is the only railroad known to have used a printed cancel on this stamp.

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Example of IGNRR Handstamp

Ron Lesher scan

I&GNRR check with rouletted 2ct printed cancel

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Unusual Ink on the 1898 Series Dollar Values

THESE STAMPS ARE BOTH SCOTT R191! From fugitive ink to color changelings with unknown origins. These are both copies of R191. Can only exposure to light produce the color changes you see in stamp on the right? Or possibly a soak in bleach or other chemical? I doubt it. These stamps have so many examples of changelings that there must be something else happening. The ink used on this dark green series of stamps was different than that known on any other BEP printed stamps, never mind the varnish square. It is likely the BEP was experimenting with ink on this issue. Inks are discussed further if you click on the stamps.

Collecting Cancels

Welcome to 1898 Revenues, a website that features the stamps used to pay the Spanish-American war taxes imposed by the US Government starting in July, 1898. But while this site features those stamps in general, a focus is on their cancels, and on the firms that applied them. Unlike US postage stamps, which were canceled by the US Post Office and now Postal Service, revenue stamps were ordered to be canceled by their users in such a way that the identity of the user and the date was included in the cancel. This makes the collecting possibilities nearly endless, so that a single variety of stamp, for example, the 2 cent battleship stamp intended to pay documentary taxes, had potentially millions of different users, and therefore as many different cancels. Please browse the site and discover the collecting possibilities, made so much more accessible now through online sales. Cancels on these stamps have become much more interesting and accessible with the massive amounts of archival and historical data available on line. Rather than hours spent in libraries or with heavy volumes to identify cancels, search engines allow for cancel sleuthing at home.

Battleship Proprietary Printed Cancels: Updating the Joyce/Chappell Lists

In the 1950s, Morton Dean Joyce updated a list of printed cancels on the battleship proprietaries compiled by Clarence Chappell. Joyce's is a very long list consisting of more than one hundred companies and thousands of cancel dates. In the years since Joyce completed his list, many new cancel dates have been demonstrated to exist, and an update of the 1950s list is needed.

This site is attempting that update. Using the Joyce/Chappell lists and the former collection of Henry Tolman (ARA #25) as a base, a gradual effort will be made to post updated lists to the best of my knowledge, making a call for those that can contribute new dates and new images of those cancels.

Following in this column are quick links to excel files of these lists by company. Also are links to the posts that I have made on this blog regarding these companies and their cancels.